Employee Insight Beyond Satisfaction Survey: Why It's Important for Any Organization
Karir
6 April 2023
Riko Rahman, VP of Commercial from Mindtera, spoke about the importance of an in-depth employee insight on understanding employees —beyond a satisfaction survey.
According to Forbes, employee engagement is influenced by their daily experiences with leaders, teams, and their environment. This plays an important role in the success of a company, especially through open and sustainable insight and feedback. Recently, Riko, who has more than 14 years of experience as an Insight & Data Analytics practitioner, joined Mindtera, a company that focuses on advocating a happy work culture as a standard work life in Indonesia. His interest in human science and data makes Riko believe that the needs of a better work culture would grow and become essential.
Q: Why did you choose to join a company that specializes in employee insight?
Riko: In my opinion, Mindtera is interesting because we focus on employee insight that is much deeper. As we know so far, the common insight that HR gets at the company is in the form of employee satisfaction surveys. In most practices it is not deep enough and it's taken only once or a maximum of twice a year. The questions asked are also mainly about basic things such as how satisfied are you with the company, how would you recommend the company, and so on.
By means of employee insight in Mindtera, we can help the company to set their work culture and how they handle any problems that exist with employees. Mindtera designed to understand and get the genuine aspirations of employees for later use in a professional and relevant manner by HR. That way, future plans and programs that are better for the company and the employees in it will be much more structured and on target.
Q: What makes this employee insight much better than the satisfaction survey that the company has been using for a long time?
Riko: The assessment that is usually carried out by many companies is to conduct an employee survey once or twice a year and it is usually still company centric. In other words, everything is still measured by the volume of productivity. Meanwhile, employee insight should be measured much deeper using advanced and developed modules according to human science such as psychology and sociology.
Through this knowledge, we aim the company to understand employees better, understand their emotions, help measure behavior in how they live their life, how is their personal wellness, and assess their alignment as employees with the corporate values that exist within the company. Those kinds of measurement metrics which are expected to be much more suitable, detailed, and more able to provide insight to HR and management to optimize their workforce.
Q: What are the advantages of employee insight that are not only useful for the company but also for the employees themselves?
Riko: One thing that encouraged me to join Mindtera is that I agree that we need to improve and help develop employee’s Emotional Quotient (EQ) and Social Intelligence (SQ). In Indonesia alone, this kind of service is still rare. We are not equipped with, say, how to deal with toxic people, how we should act when we fail or don't achieve our goals as targeted, how to help, and so on. Such things are still very limited. However, through employee insight, we can find out all that because we could identify what are possible barriers or boundaries that limit the employees to achieve more than where they are now.
Q: What method is used to collect employee insight?
Riko: We use various techniques including diary and assessment. We measure employee emotions in a diary format and can be filled in at any time. This platform is also ‘always on’, available whenever employees want, so we could have rich data points and aggregate the emotions. In terms of collecting data, Mindtera also very flexible whether use Mindtera’s platform or inject the measurement to current platform/system that commonly used by employees (i.e. existing company apps, chat application, existing HRIS/HRMS, or other medium). We believe the use of tech should bring hassle free process both for company and employees.
This practice, I believe, is much more natural in gaining data from the employees as emotions itself is very dynamic. With tools and much sharper analytics, we hope that we can help advance industrial growth with more sustainable people growth.
Q: What measurement tools do you think companies will need most —in any industry— right now?
Riko: Always-on employee insight because this feature allows HR to capture and track continuously. As an ordinary human being, employee productivity and emotions dynamically up and down. For example, now they are motivated at work, tomorrow or the next month they are unhappy and less motivated. The underlying problems also vary. It could be about family, financial matters, health, or the employees themselves who really need 'refreshment'.
By tracking through measuring tools, we can know in general how the employee's performance, and how we should manage and react. While in current common practice we did an approach once a year by filling in a questionnaire which was only a routine. We will not know the employee's holistic situation. Are they happy, is the collaboration between the teams going well, and so on.
Q: By looking at the dynamics of the company, the presence of increasingly advanced technology and diverse work systems, will employee insight be needed by many companies?
Riko: I believe that in the near future this industry will continue to grow because companies' interest in investment in people is much better than 5–10 years ago. I personally believe in and are passionate about improving work standards and desire to shape a culture in every company. For sure there will be further development to sharpen the measurement and I hope more parties are involved and collaborate in this initiative, so together we can grow sustainably from a people perspective.
For further information about employee insight and Mindtera,
Contact Us:
Riko Rahman, Mindtera